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1
The Withered Arm
By
Thomas Hardy
2
I
A Lorn Milkmaid
It was an eighty-cow dairy, and the troop of milkers, regular and
supernumerary, were all at work; for, though the time of year was as yet but
early April, the feed lay entirely in water-meadows, and the cows were 'in full
pail'. The hour was about six in the evening, and three-fourths of the large,
red, rectangular animals having been finished off, there was opportunity for
a little conversation.
'He do bring home his bride tomorrow, I hear. They've come as far as
Anglebury today.'
The voice seemed to proceed from the belly of the cow called Cherry, but the
speaker was a milking-woman, whose face was buried in the flank of that
motionless beast.
'Hav' anybody seen her?' said another.
There was a negative response from the first. 'Though they say she's a rosy-
cheeked, tisty-tosty little body enough,' she added; and as the milkmaid
spoke she turned her face so that she could glance past her cow's tall to the
other side of the barton, where a thin, fading woman of thirty milked
somewhat apart from the rest.
'Years younger than he, they say,' continued the second, with also a glance
of reflectiveness in the same direction.
'How old do you call him, then?'
3
'Thirty or so.'
'More like forty,' broke in an old milkman near, in a long white pinafore or
'wropper', and with the brim of his hat tied down, so that he looked like a
woman. ''A was born before our Great Weir was builded, and I hadn't man's
wages when I laved water there.'
The discussion waxed so warm that the purr of the milk streams became
jerky, till a voice from another cow's belly cried with authority, 'Now then,
what the Turk do it matter to us about Farmer Lodge's age, or Farmer
Lodge's new mis'ess? I shall have to pay him nine pound a year for the rent
of every one of these milchers, whatever his age or hers. Get on with your
work, or 'twill be dark afore we have done. The evening is pinking in a'ready.'
This speaker was the dairyman himself, by whom the milkmaids and men
were employed.
Nothing more was said publicly about Farmer Lodge's wedding, but the first
woman murmured under her cow to her next neighbour. "Tis hard for she,'
signifying the thin worn milkmaid aforesaid.
'O no,' said the second. 'He ha'n't spoke to Rhoda Brook for years.'
When the milking was done they washed their pails and hung them on a
many-forked stand made as usual of the peeled limb of an oak-tree, set
upright in the earth, and resembling a colossal antlered horn. The majority
then dispersed in various directions homeward. The thin woman who had
not spoken was joined by a boy of twelve or thereabout, and the twain went
away up the field also.
Their course lay apart from that of the others, to a lonely spot high above
the water-meads, and not far from the border of Egdon Heath, whose dark
countenance was visible in the distance as they drew nigh to their home.
4
'They've just been saying down in barton that your father brings his young
wife home from Anglebury tomorrow,' the woman observed. 'I shall want to
send you for a few things to market, and you'll be pretty sure to meet 'em.'
'Yes, Mother,' said the boy. 'Is Father married then?'
'Yes. . . . You can give her a look, and tell me what she's like, if you do see
her.'
'Yes, Mother.'
'If she's dark or fair, and if she's tall - as tall as I. And if she seems like a
woman who has ever worked for a living, or one that has been always well
off, and has never done anything, and shows marks of the lady on her, as I
expect she do.'
'Yes.'
They crept up the hill in the twilight and entered the cottage. It was built of
mud-walls, the surface of which had been washed by many rains into
channels and depressions that left none of the original flat face visible, while
here and there in the thatch above a rafter showed like a bone protruding
through the skin.
She was kneeling down in the chimney-corner, before two pieces of turf laid
together with the heather inwards, blowing at the red-hot ashes with her
breath till the turves flamed. The radiance lit her pale cheek, and made her
dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew. 'Yes,' she
resumed, 'see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be
white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are
milker's hands like mine.'
5
The boy again promised, inattentively this time, his mother not observing
that he was cutting a notch with his pocket-knife in the beech-backed chair.
6
II
The Young Wife
The road from Anglebury to Holmstoke is in general level, but there is one
place where a sharp ascent breaks its monotony. Farmers homeward-hound
from the former market-town, who trot all the rest of the way, walk their
horses up this short incline.
The next evening while the sun was yet bright a handsome new gig, with a
lemon-coloured body and red wheels, was spinning westward along the level
highway at the heels of a powerful mare. The driver was a yeoman in the
prime of life, cleanly shaven like an actor, his face being toned to that
bluish-vermilion hue which so often graces a thriving farmer's features when
returning home after successful dealings in the town. Beside him sat a
woman, many years his junior - almost, indeed, a girl. Her face too was
fresh in colour, but it was of a totally different quality - soft and evanescent,
like the light under a heap of rose-petals.
Few people travelled this way, for it was not a main road; and the long white
riband of gravel that stretched before them was empty, save of one small
scarce-moving speck, which presently resolved itself into the figure of a boy,
who was creeping on at a snail's pace, and continually looking behind him -
the heavy bundle he carried being some excuse for, if not the reason of, his
dilatoriness. When the bouncing gig-party slowed at the bottom of the
incline above mentioned, the pedestrian was only a few yards in front.
Supporting the large bundle by putting one hand on his hip, he turned and
looked straight at the farmer's wife as though he would read her through
and through, pacing along abreast of the horse.
The low sun was full in her face, rendering every feature, shade, and colour
distinct, from the curve of her little nostril to the colour of her eyes. The
farmer, though he seemed annoyed at the boy's persistent presence, did not
order him to get out of the way; and thus the lad preceded them, his hard
gaze never leaving her, till they reached the top of the ascent, when the
7
farmer trotted on with relief in his lineaments having taken no outward
notice of the boy whatever.
'How that poor lad stared at me!' said the young wife.
'Yes, dear; I saw that he did.'
'He is one of the village, I suppose?'
'One of the neighbourhood. I think he lives with his mother a mile or two
off.'
'He knows who we are, no doubt?'
'O yes. You must expect to be stared at just at first, my pretty Gertrude.'
'I do - though I think the poor boy may have looked at us in the hope we
might relieve him of his heavy load, rather than from curiosity.'
'O no,' said her husband off-handedly. 'These country lads will carry a
hundredweight once they get it on their backs; besides his pack had more
size than weight in it. Now, then, another mile and I shall be able to show
you our house in the distance - if it is not too dark before we get there.' The
wheels spun round, and particles flew from their periphery as before, till a
white house of ample dimensions revealed itself, with farm-buildings and
ricks at the back.
Meanwhile the boy had quickened his pace, and turning up a by-lane some
mile-and-a-half short of the white farmstead, ascended towards the leaner
pastures, and so on to the cottage of his mother.
8
She had reached home after her day's milking at the outlying dairy, and was
washing cabbage at the doorway in the declining light. 'Hold up the net a
moment,' she said, without preface, as the boy came up.
He flung down his bundle, held the edge of the cabbage-net, and as she
filled its meshes with the dripping leaves she went on, 'Well, did you see
her?'
'Yes; quite plain.'
'Is she ladylike?'
'Yes; and more. A lady complete.'
'Is she young?'
'Well, she's growed up, and her ways be quite a woman's.'
'Of course. What colour is her hair and face?'
'Her hair is lightish, and her face as comely as a live doll's.'
'Her eyes, then, are not dark like mine?'
'No - of a bluish turn, and her mouth is very nice and red; and when she
smiles, her teeth show white.'
9
'Is she tall?' said the woman sharply.
'I couldn't see. She was sitting down.'
'Then do you go to Holmstoke church tomorrow morning: she's sure to be
there. Go early and notice her walking in, and come home and tell me if
she's taller than I.'
'Very well, Mother. But why don't you go and see for yourself?'
'I go to see her! I wouldn't look up at her if she were to pass my window this
instant. She was with Mr Lodge, of course. What did he say or do?'
'Just the same as usual.'
'Took no notice of you?'
'None.'
Next day the mother put a clean shirt on the boy, and started him off for
Holmstoke church. He reached the ancient little pile when the door was just
being opened, and he was the first to enter. Taking his seat by the font, he
watched all the parishioners file in. The well-to-do Farmer Lodge came
nearly last; and his young wife, who accompanied him, walked up the aisle
with the shyness natural to a modest woman who had appeared thus for the
first time. As all other eyes were fixed upon her, the youth's stare was not
noticed now.
When he reached home his mother said, 'Well?' before he had entered the
room.
10
'She is not tall. She is rather short,' he replied.
'Ah!' said his mother, with satisfaction.
'But she's very pretty - very. In fact, she's lovely.' The youthful freshness of
the yeoman's wife had evidently made an impression even on the somewhat
hard nature of the boy.
'That's all I want to hear,' said his mother quickly. 'Now, spread the table-
cloth. The hare you wired is very tender; but mind nobody catches you.
You've never told me what sort of hands she had.'
'I have never seen 'em. She never took off her gloves'
'What did she wear this morning?'
'A white bonnet and a silver-coloured gownd. It whewed and whistled so
loud when it rubbed against the pews that the lady coloured up more than
ever for very shame at the noise, and pulled it in to keep it from touching;
but when she pushed into her seat, it whewed more than ever. Mr Lodge, he
seemed pleased, and his waistcoat stuck out, and his great golden seals
hung like a lord's; but she seemed to wish her noisy gownd anywhere but on
her.'
'Not she! However, that will do now.'
These descriptions of the newly married couple were continued from time to
time by the boy at his mother's request, after any chance encounter he had
had with them. But Rhoda Brook, though she might easily have seen young
Mrs Lodge for herself by walking a couple of miles, would never attempt an
11
excursion towards the quarter where the farmhouse lay. Neither did she, at
the daily milking in the dairyman's yard on Lodge's outlying second farm,
ever speak on the subject of the recent marriage. The dairyman, who rented
the cows of Lodge, and knew perfectly the tall milkmaid's history, with
manly kindness always kept the gossip in the cow-barton from annoying
Rhoda. But the atmosphere thereabout was full of the subject the first days
of Mrs Lodge's arrival; and fom her boy's description and the casual words of
the other milkers, Rhoda Brook could raise a mental image of' the
unconscious Mrs Lodge that was realistic as a photograph.
12
III
A Vision
One night, two or three weeks after the bridal return, when the boy had
gone to bed, Rhoda sat a long time over the turf ashes that she had raked
out in front of her to extinguish them. She contemplated so intently the new
wife, as presented to her in her mind's eye over the embers, that she forgot
the lapse of time. At last, wearied by her day's work, she too retired.
But the figure which had occupied her so much during this and the
previous days was not to be banished at night. For the first time Gertrude
Lodge 'visited the supplanted woman in her dreams. Rhoda Brook dreamed -
since her assertion that she really saw, before falling asleep, was not to be
believed - that the young wife, in the pale silk dress and white bonnet, but
with features shockingly distorted, and wrinkled as by age, was sitting upon
her chest as she lay. The pressure of Mrs Lodge's person grew heavier; the
blue eyes peered cruelly into her face: and then the figure thrust forward its
left hand mockingly, so as' to make the wedding-ring it wore glitter in
Rhoda's eyes. Maddened mentally, and nearly suffocated by pressure, the
sleeper struggled; the incubus, still regarding her, withdrew to the foot of
the bed, only, however, to come forward by degrees, resume her seat, and
flash her left hand as before.
Gasping for breath, Rhoda, in a last desperate effort, swung out her right
hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left arm, and whirled it
backward to the floor, starting up herself as she did so with a low cry.
'O, merciful heaven!' she cried, sitting on the edge of the bed in a cold sweat;
'that was not a dream - she was here!'
She could feel her antagonist's arm within her grasp even now - the very
flesh and hone of it, as it seemed. She looked on the floor whither she had
whirled the spectre, but there was nothing to be seen.
13
Rhoda Brook slept no more that night, and when she went milking at the
next dawn they noticed how pale and haggard she looked. The milk that she
drew quivered into the pail; her hand had not calmed even yet. and still
retained the feel of the arm, She came home to breakfast as wearily as if it
had been supper-time.
'What was that noise in your chimmer, mother, last night?' said her son.
'You fell off the bed. surely?'
'Did you hear anything fall? At what time?'
'Just when the clock struck two.'
She could not explain, and when the meal was done went silently about her
household works, the boy assisting her, for he hated going afield on the
farms, and she indulged his reluctance. Between eleven and twelve the
garden-gate clicked, and she lifted her eyes to the window. At the bottom of
the garden, within the gate, stood the woman of her vision. Rhoda seemed
transfixed.
'Ah, she said she would come!' exclaimed the boy, also observing her.
'Said so - when? How does she know us?'
'I have seen and spoken' to her. I talked to her yesterday.'
'I told you,' said the mother, flushing indignantly, 'never to speak to anybody
in that house, or go near the place.'
14
'I did not speak to her till she spoke to me. And I did not go near the place. I
met her in the road.'
'What did you tell her?'
'Nothing. She said, "Are you the poor boy who had to bring the heavy load
from market?" And she looked at my hoots, and said they would not keep
my feet dry if it came on wet, because they were so cracked. I told her I lived
with my mother, and we had enough to do to keep ourselves, and that's how
it was; and she said then: "I'll come and bring you some better hoots, and
see your mother." She gives away things to other folks in the meads besides
us.'
Mrs Lodge was by this time close to the door - not in her silk, as Rhoda had
dreamt of in the bed-chamber, but in a morning hat, and gown of common
light material, which became her better than silk. On her arm she carried a
basket.
The impression remaining from the night's experience was still strong.
Brook had almost expected to see the wrinkles, the scorn and the cruelty on
her visitor's face. She would have escaped an interview, had escape been
possible. There was, however, no backdoor to the cottage, and in an instant
the boy had lifted the latch to Mrs Lodge's gentle knock.
'I see I have come to the right house,' said she, glancing at the lad, and
smiling. 'But I was not sure till you opened the door.'
The figure and action were those of the phantom; but her voice was so
indescribably sweet, her glance so winning, her smile so tender, so unlike
that of Rhoda's midnight visitant, that the latter could hardly believe the
evidence of her senses. She was truly glad that she had not hidden away in
sheer aversion, as she had been inclined to do. In her basket Mrs Lodge
brought the pair of boots that she had promised to the boy, and other useful
articles.
15
At these proofs of a kindly feeling towards her and hers Rhoda's heart
reproached her bitterly. This innocent young thing should have her blessing
and not her curse. When she left them a light seemed gone from the
dwelling. Two days later she came again to know if the boots fitted; and less
than a fortnight after paid Rhoda another call. On this occasion the boy was
absent.
'I walk a good deal,' said Mrs Lodge, 'and your house is the nearest outside
our own parish. I hope you are well. You don't look quite well.'
Rhoda said she was well enough; and, indeed, though the paler of the two,
there was more of the strength that endures in her well-defined features and
large frame than in the soft-cheeked young woman before her. The
conversation became quite confidential as regarded their powers and
weaknesses; and when Mrs Lodge was leaving, Rhoda said, 'I hope you will
find this air agree with you, ma'am, and not suffer from the damp of the
water-meads.'
The younger one replied that there was not much doubt of her general
health being usually good. 'Though, now you remind me, she added, 'I have
one little ailment which puzzles me. It is nothing serious, but I cannot make
it out.'
She uncovered her left hand and arm; and their outline confronted Rhoda's
gaze as the exact original of the limb she had beheld and seized in her
dream. Upon the pink round surface of the arm were faint marks of an
unhealthy colour, as if produced by a rough grasp. Rhoda's eyes became
riveted on the discolorations; she fancied that she discerned in them the
shape of her own four fingers.
'How did it happen?' she said mechanically.
16
'I cannot tell,' replied Mrs Lodge, shaking her head. 'One night when I was
sound asleep, dreaming I was away in some strange place, a pain suddenly
shot into my arm there, and was so keen as to awaken me. I must have
struck it in the daytime, I suppose, though I don't remember doing so.' She
added, laughing, 'I tell my dear husband that it looks just as if he had flown
into a rage and struck me there. O, I daresay it will soon disappear.'
'Ha, ha! Yes. . . . On what night did it come?'
Mrs Lodge considered, and said it would be a fortnight ago on the morrow.
'When I awoke I could not remember where I was,' she added, 'till the clock
striking two reminded me.'
She had named the night and hour of Rhoda's spectral encounter, and
Brook felt like a guilty thing. The artless disclosure startled her; she did not
reason on the freaks of coincidence; and all the scenery of that ghastly night
returned with double vividness to her mind.
'O, can it be,' she said to herself, when her visitor had departed, 'that I
exercise a malignant power over people against my own will?' She knew that
she had been slyly called a witch since hey fall; but never having understood
why that particular stigma had been attached to her, it had passed
disregarded. Could this be the explanation, and had such things as this ever
happened before?
17
IV
A Suggestion
The summer drew on, and Rhoda Brook almost dreaded to meet Mrs Lodge
again, notwithstanding that her feeling for the young wife amounted well-
nigh to affection. Something in her own individuality seemed to convict
Rhoda of crime. Yet a fatality sometimes would direct the steps of the latter
to the outskirts of Holmstoke whenever she left her house for any other
purpose than her daily work; and hence it happened that their next
encounter was out of doors. Rhoda could not avoid the subject which had so
mystified her, and after the first few words she stammered, 'I hope your -
arm is well again, ma'm?' She had perceived with consternation that
Gertrude Lodge carried her left arm stiffly.
'No; it not quite well. Indeed it is no better at all; it is rather worse. It pains
me dreadfully sometimes.'
'Perhaps you had better go to a doctor, ma'am.'
She replied that she had already seen a doctor. Her husband had insisted
upon her going to one. But the surgeon had not seemed to understand the
afflicted limb at all; he had told her to bathe it in hot water, and she had
bathed it, but the treatment had done no good.
'Will you let me see it?' said the milkwoman.
Mrs Lodge pushed up her sleeve and disclosed the place, which was a few
inches above the wrist. As soon as Rhoda Brook saw it, she could hardly
preserve her composure. There was nothing of the nature of a wound, but
the arm at that point had a shrivelled look, and the outline of the four
fingers appeared more distinct than at the former Moreover, she fancied that
they were imprinted in precisely the relative position of her clutch upon the
18
arm in the trance; the first linger towards Gertrude's wrist, and the fourth
towards her elbow.
What the impress resembled seemed to have struck Gertrude herself since
their last meeting. 'It looks almost like finger marks,' she said; adding with a
faint laugh, 'my husband says it is as if some witch, or the devil himself, had
taken hold of me there, and blasted the flesh.'
Rhoda shivered. 'That's fancy,' she said hurriedly. 'I wouldn't mind it, if I
were you.'
'I shouldn't so much mind it,' said the younger, with hesitation, 'if - if I
hadn't a notion that it makes my husband dislike me - no, love me less. Men
think so much of personal appearance.'
'Some do - he for one.'
'Yes; and he was very proud of mine, at first.'
'Keep your arm covered from his sight.'
'Ah - he knows the disfigurement is there!' She tried to hide the tears that
filled her eyes.
'Well, ma'am, I earnestly hope it will go away soon.'
And so the milkwoman's mind was chained anew to the subject by a horrid
sort of spell as she returned home. The sense of having been guilty of an act
of malignity increased, affect as she might to ridicule her superstition. In her
secret heart Rhoda did not altogether object to a slight diminution of her
successor's beauty, by whatever means it had come about; but she did not
19
wish to inflict upon her physical pain. For though this pretty young woman
had rendered impossible any reparation which Lodge might have made
Rhoda for his past conduct, everything like resentment at the unconscious
usurpation had quite passed away from the elder's mind.
If the sweet and kindly Gertrude Lodge only knew of the dream-scene in the
bed-chamber, what would she think? Not to inform her of it seemed
treachery in the presence of her friendliness; but tell she could not of her
own accord neither could she devise a remedy.
She mused upon the matter the greater part of the night; and the next day,
after the morning milking, set out to obtain another glimpse of Gertrude
Lodge if she could, being held to her by a gruesome fascination. By watching
the house from a distance the milkmaid was presently able to discern the
farmer's wife in a ride she was taking alone - probably to join her husband
in some distant field. Mrs Lodge perceived her, and cantered in her
direction.
'Good morning, Rhoda!' Gertrude said, when she had come up. 'I was going
to call.'
Rhoda noticed that Mrs Lodge held the reins with some difficulty.
'I hope - the bad arm,' said Rhoda.
'They tell me there is possibly one way by which I might be able to find out
the cause, and so perhaps the cure of it,' replied the other anxiously. 'It is by
going to some clever man over in Egdon Heath. They did not know if he was
still alive - and I cannot remember his name at this moment; but they said
that you knew more of his movements than anybody else hereabout, and
could tell me if he were still to be consulted. Dear me what was his name?
But you know.'
20
'Not Conjuror Trendle?' said her thin companion, turning pale.
'Trendle - yes. Is he alive?'
'I believe so,' said Rhoda, with reluctance.
'Why do you call him conjuror?'
'Well - they say - they used to say he was a - he had powers other folks have
not.'
'O, how could my people be so superstitious as to recommend a man of that
sort! I thought they meant some medical man. I shall think no more of him.'
Rhoda looked relieved, and Mrs Lodge rode on. The milkwoman had
inwardly seen, from the moment she heard of her having been mentioned as
a reference for this man,' that there must exist a sarcastic feeling among the
work-folk that a sorceress would know the wbereabouts of the exorcist. They
suspected her, then. A short time ago this' would have given no concern to a
woman of her common sense. But she had a haunting reason to be
superstitious now; and she had been seized with sudden dread that this
Conjuror Trendle might name her as the malignant influence' which was
blasting the fair person of Gertrude, and so lead her friend to hate her for
ever, and to treat her as some fiend in human shape.
But all was not over. Two days after, a shadow intruded into the window-
pattern thrown on Rhoda Brook's floor by the afternoon sun. The woman
opened the door at once, almost breathlessly.
'Are you alone?' said Gertrude. She seemed to be no less harassed and
anxious than Brook herself.
21
'Yes,' said Rhoda.
'The place on my arm seems worse, and troubles me!' the young farmer's
wife went OIL 'It is so mysterious! I do hope it will not be an incurable
wound. I have again been thinking of what they said about Conjuror
Trendle. I don't really believe in such men, but I should not mind just
visiting him, from curiosity - though on no account must my husband know.
Is it far to where he lives?'
'Yes - five miles,' said Rhoda backwardly. 'In the heart of Egdon.'
'Well, I should have to walk. Could not you go with me to show me the way -
say tomorrow afternoon?'
'O, not I; that is----,' the milkwoman murmured, with a start of dismay.
Again the dread seized her that something to do with her fierce act in the
dream might be revealed, and her character in the eyes of the most useful
friend she had ever had be ruined irretrievably.
Mrs Lodge urged, and Rhoda finally assented, though with much misgiving.
Sad as' the journey would be to her, she could not conscientiously stand in
the way of a possible remedy for her patron's strange affliction. It was agreed
that, to escape suspicion of their mystic intent, they should meet at the edge
of the heath at the corner of a plantation which was visible from the spot
where they now stood.
22
V
Conjuror Trendle
By the next afternoon Rhoda would have done anything to escape this
inquiry. But she had promised to go. Moreover, there was a horrid
fascination at times in becoming instrumental in throwing such possible
light on her own character as would reveal her to be something greater in
the occult world than she had ever herself suspected.
She started just before the time of day mentioned between them, and half an
hour's brisk walking brought her to the south-eastern extension of the
Egdon tract of country, where the fir plantation was. A slight figure, cloaked
and veiled; was already there. Rhoda recognized, almost with a shudder,
that Mrs Lodge bore her left arm in a sling.
They hardly spoke to each other, and immediately set out on their climb into
the interior of this solemn, country, which stood high above the rich alluvial
soil they had left half an hour before. It was a long walk; thick clouds made
the atmosphere dark, though it was as yet only early afternoon; and the
wind howled dismally over the slopes of the heath - not improbably the same
heath which had witnessed the agony of the Wessex King Ina, presented to
after-ages as Lear. Gertrude Lodge talked most, Rhoda replying with
monosyllabic preoccupation. She had a strange dislike to walking on the
side of her companion where hung the afflicted arm, moving round to the
other when inadvertently near it. Much heather had been brushed by their
feet when they descended upon a cart-track, beside which stood the house
of the man they sought.
He did not profess his remedial practices openly, or care anything about
their continuance, his direct interests being those of a dealer in furze, turf,
'sharp sand', and other local products. Indeed, he affected not to believe
largely in his own powers, and when watts that had been shown him for
cure miraculously disappeared - which it must be owned they infallibly did -
he would say lightly, 'O, I only drink a glass of grog upon 'em at your
expense - perhaps it's all chance', and immediately turn the subject.
23
He was at home when they arrived, having in fact seen them descending into
his valley. He was a grey-bearded man, with a reddish face, and he looked
singularly at Rhoda the first moment he beheld her. Mrs Lodge told him her
errand; and then with words of self-disparagement he examined her arm.
'Medicine can't cure it,' he said promptly. "Tis the work of an enemy.'
Rhoda shrank into herself, and drew back.
'An enemy? What enemy?' asked Mrs Lodge.
He shook his head. 'That's best known to yourself,' he said. 'If you like, I can
show the person to you, though I shall not myself know who it is. I can do
no more; and don't wish to do that.'
She pressed him; on which he told Rhoda to wait outside where she stood,
and took Mrs Lodge into the room. It opened immediately from the door;
and, as the latter remained ajar, Rhoda Brook could see the proceedings
without taking part in them. He brought a tumbler from the dresser, nearly
filled it with water, and fetching an egg, prepared it in some private way;
after which he broke it on the edge of the glass, so that the white went in
and the yolk remained. As it was getting gloomy, he took the glass and its
contents to the window, and told Gertrude to watch the mixture closely.
They leant over the table together, and the milkwoman could see the opaline
hue of the egg-fluid changing form as it sank in the water, but she was not
near enough to define the shape that it assumed.
'Do you catch the likeness of any face or figure as you look?' demanded the
conjuror of the young woman.
24
She murmured a reply, in tones so low as to be inaudible to Rhoda,' and
continued to gaze intently into the glass. Rhoda turned, and walked a few
steps away.
When Mrs Lodge came out, and her face was met by the light, it appeared
exceedingly pale - as pale as Rhoda's - against the sad dun shades of the
upland's garniture. Trendle shut the door behind her, and they at once
started homeward together. But Rhoda perceived that her companion had
quite changed.
'Did he charge much?' she asked tentatively.
'O no - nothing, He would not take a farthing,' said Gertrude.
'And what did you see?' inquired Rhoda.
'Nothing I - care to speak of.' The constraint in her manner was remarkable;
her face ,was so rigid as to wear an oldened aspect, faintly suggestive of the
face in Rhoda's' bed-chamber.
'Was it you who first proposed coming here?' Mrs Lodge suddenly inquired,
after a long pause. 'How very odd, if you did!'
'No. But I am not very sorry we have come, all things considered.' she
replied. For the first time a sense of triumph possessed her, and she did not
altogether deplore that the young thing at her side should learn that their
lives had been antagonized by other influences than their own.
The subject was no more alluded to during the long and dreary walk home.
But in some way or other a story was whispered about the many-dairied
lowland that winter that Mrs Lodge's gradual loss of the use of her left arm
was owing to her being 'overlooked' by Rhoda Brook. The latter kept her own
25
counsel about the incubus, but her face grew sadder and thinner; and in the
spring she and her boy disappeared from the neighbourhood of Holmstoke.
26
VI
A Second Attempt
Half a dozen years passed away. and Mr and Mrs Lodge's married experience
sank into prosiness, and worse. The farmer was usually gloomy and silent:
the woman whom he had wooed for her grace and beauty was contorted and
disfigured in the left limb; moreover, she had brought him no child, which
rendered it likely that he would be the last of a family who had occupied
that valley for some two hundred years. He thought of Rhoda Brook and her
son; and feared this might be a judgement from heaven upon him.
The once blithe-hearted and enlightened Gertrude was changing into an
irritable, superstitious woman, whose whole time was given to
experimenting upon her ailment with every quack remedy she came across.
She was honestly attached to her husband, and was ever secretly hoping
against hope to win back his heart again by regaining some at least of her
personal beauty. Hence it arose that her closet was lined with bottles,
packets, and ointment-pots of every description - nay, bunches of mystic
herbs, charms, and books of necromancy, which in her schoolgirl time she
would have ridiculed as folly.
'Damned if you won't poison yourself with these apothecary messes and
witch mixtures some time or other,' said her husband, when his eye
chanced to fall upon the multitudinous array.
She did not reply, but turned her sad, soft glance upon him in such heart-
swollen reproach that he looked sorry for his words, and added, 'I only
meant it for your good, you know, Gertrude.'
'I'll clear out the whole lot, and destroy them,' said she huskily, 'and try
such remedies no more!'
27
'You want somebody to cheer you,' he observed. 'I once thought of adopting
a boy; but he is too old now. And he is gone away I don't know where.'
She guessed to whom he alluded; for, Rhoda Brook's story had in the course
of years become known to her; though not a, word had ever passed between
her husband and herself on the subject. Neither had she ever spoken to him
of her visit to Conjuror Trendle, and of what was revealed to her, or she
thought was revealed to her, by that solitary heathman.
She was now five-and-twenty; but she seemed older. 'Six 'years of marriage,
and only a few months of love,' she sometimes whispered to herself. And
then she thought of the apparent cause, and said, with a tragic glance at her
withering limb, 'If I could only be again as I was when he first saw me!'
She obediently destroyed her nostrums and charms; but there remained a
hankering wish to try something else - some other sort of cure altogether.
She had never revisited Trendle since she had been conducted to the house
of the solitary by Rhoda against her will; but it now suddenly occurred to
Gertrude that she would, in a last desperate effort at deliverance from this
seeming curse, again seek out the man, if he yet lived. He was entitled to a
certain credence, for the indistinct form he had raised in the glass had
undoubtedly resembled the only woman in the world who - as she now
knew, though not then - could have a reason for bearing her ill-will. The
visit should be paid.
This time she went alone, though she nearly got lost on the heath, and
roamed a considerable distance out of her way. Trendle's house was
reached' at last, however: he was not indoors, and instead of waiting at the
cottage. she went to where his bent figure was pointed out to her at work a
long way off. Trendle remembered her, and laying down the handful of furze-
roots which he was gathering and throwing into a heap, he offered to
accompany her in the homeward direction, as the distance was considerable
and the days were short. So they walked together, his head bowed nearly to
the earth, and his form of a colour with it.
28
'You can send away warts and other excrescences, I know,' she said; 'why
can't you send away this?' And the arm was uncovered.
'You think too much of my powers!' said Trendle; 'and I am old and weak
now, too. No, no; it is too much for me to attempt in my own person. What
have ye tried?'
She named to him some of the hundred medicaments and counterspells
which she had adopted from time to time. He shook his head.
'Some were good enough,' he said approvingly; 'but not many of them for
such as this. This is of the nature of a blight, not of the nature of a wound;
and if you ever do throw it off, it will be all at once.'
'If I only could!'
'There is only one chance of doing it known to me. It has never failed in
kindred afflictions - that I can declare. But it is hard to carry out, and
especially for a woman.'
'Tell me!' said she.
'You must touch with the limb the neck of a man who's been hanged.'
She started a little at the image he had raised.
'Before he's cold - just after he's cut down,' continued the conjuror
impassively.
29
'How can that do good?'
'It will turn the blood and change the constitution. But, as I say, to do it is
hard. You must go to the jail when there's a hanging, and wait for him when
he's brought off the gallows. Lots have done it, though perhaps not such
pretty women as you. I used to send dozens for skin complaints. But that
was in former times. The last I sent was in '13 - near twelve years ago.'
He had no more to tell her; and, when he had put her into a straight track
homeward, turned and left her, refusing all money as at first.
30
VII
A Ride
The communication sank deep into Gertrude's mind. Her nature was rather
a timid one; and probably of all remedies that the white wizard could have
suggested there was not one which would have filled her with so much
aversion as this, not to speak of the immense obstacles in the way of its
adoption.
Casterbridge, the county-town, was a dozen or fifteen miles off; and though
in those days, when men were executed for horse-stealing, arson, and
burglary, an assize seldom passed without a hanging, it was not likely that
she could get access to the body of the criminal' unaided. And the fear of her
husband's anger made her reluctant to breathe a word of Trendle's
suggestion to him or to anybody about him.
She did nothing for months, and patiently bore her disfigurement as before.
But her woman's nature, craving for renewed love, through the medium of
renewed beauty (she was but twenty-five), was ever stimulating her to try
what, at any rate, could hardly do her any harm. 'What came by a spell will
go by a spell surely,' she would say. Whenever her imagination pictured the
act she shrank in terror from the possibility of it: then the words of the
conjuror, 'It will turn your blood', were seen to be capable of a scientific no
less than ghastly interpretation; the mastering desire returned;. and urged
her on again.
There was at this time but one county paper, and that her husband only
occasionally borrowed. But old-fashioned days had old-fashioned means,
and news was extensively conveyed by word of mouth from market to
market, or from fair to fair, so that, whenever such an event as an execution
was about to take place, few within a radius of twenty miles were ignorant of
the' coming sight; and, so far as Holmstoke was concerned, some
enthusiasts had been known to walk all the way to Casterbridge and back in
one day, solely to witness the spectacle. The next assizes were in March; and
31
when Gertrude Lodge heard that they had been held, she inquired stealthily
at the inn as to the result, as soon as she could find opportunity.
She was, however, too late. The time at which the sentences were to be
carried out had arrived, and to make the journey and obtain permission at
such short notice required at least her husband's assistance. She dared not
tell him, for she had found by delicate experiment that these smouldering
village beliefs made him furious if mentioned, partly because he half
entertained them himself. It was therefore necessary to wait for another
opportunity.
Her determination received a fillip from learning that two epileptic children
had attended from this very village of Holmstoke many years before with
beneficial results, though the experiment had been strongly condemned by
the neighbouring clergy. April, May, June, passed; and it is no
overstatement to say that by the end of the last-named month Gertrude
well-nigh longed for the death of a fellow-creature. Instead of her formal
prayers each night, her unconscious prayer was, O Lord, hang some guilty
or innocent person soon!'
This time she made earlier inquiries, and was altogether more systematic in
her proceedings. Moreover the season was summer, between the haymaking
and the harvest, and in the leisure thus afforded him her husband had been
holiday-taking away from home.
The assizes were in July, and she went to the inn as before. There was to be
one execution - only one - for arson.
Her greatest problem was not how to get to Casterbridge, but what means
she should adopt for obtaining admission to the jail. Though access for such
purposes had formerly never been denied,. the custom had fallen into
desuetude; and in contemplating her possible difficulties, she was again
almost driven to fall back upon her husband. But, on sounding him about
the assizes, he was so uncommunicative, so more than usually cold, that
she did not proceed, and decided that whatever she did she would do alone.
32
Fortune, obdurate hitherto, showed her unexpected favour. On the
Thursday before the Saturday fixed for the execution, Lodge remarked to her
that he was going away from home for another day or two on business at a
fair, and that he was sorry he could not take her with him.
She exhibited on this occasion so much readiness to stay at home that he
looked at her in surprise. Time had been when she would have shown deep
disappointment at the loss of such a jaunt. However, he lapsed into his
usual taciturnity, and on the day named left Holmstoke.
It was now her turn. She at first had thought of driving, but on reflection
held that driving would not do, since it would necessitate her keeping to the
turnpike-road, and so increase by tenfold the risk of her ghastly errand
being found out. She decided to ride, and avoid the beaten track,
notwithstanding that in her husband's stables there was no animal just at
present which by any stretch of imagination could be considered a lady's
mount, in spite of his promise before marriage to always keep a mare for
her. He had, however, many cart-horses, fine ones of their kind; and among
the rest was a serviceable creature, an equine Amazon, with a back as broad
as a sofa, on which Gertrude had occasionally taken an airing when unwell.
This horse she chose.
On Friday afternoon one of the men brought it round. She was dressed, and
before going down looked at her shrivelled arm. 'Ah!' she said to it, 'if it had
not been for you this terrible ordeal would have been saved me!'
When strapping up the bundle in which she carried a few articles of
clothing, she took occasion to say to the servant, 'I take these in case I
should not get back tonight from the person I am going to visit. Don't be
alarmed if I am not in by ten, and close up the house as usual. I shall be
home tomorrow for certain.' She meant then to tell her husband privately:
the deed accomplished was not like the deed projected. He would almost
certainly forgive her.
33
And then the pretty palpitating Gertrude Lodge went from her husband's
homestead; but though her goal was Casterbridge she did not take the direct
route thither through Stickleford. Her cunning course at first was in
precisely the opposite direction. As soon as she was out of sight, however,
she turned to the left, by a road which led into Egdon, and on entering the
heath wheeled round, and set out in the true course, due westerly. A more
private way down the county could not be imagined; and as to direction, she
had merely to keep her horse's head to a point a little to the right of the sun.
She knew that she would light upon a furze-cutter or cottager of some sort
from time to time, from whom she might correct her bearing.
Though the date was comparatively recent, Egdon was much less
fragmentary in character than now. The attempts - successful and otherwise
- at cultivation on the lower slopes, which intrude and break up the original
heath Into small detached heaths, had not been carried far; Enclosure Acts
had not taken effect, and the banks and fences which now exclude the cattle
of those villagers who formerly enjoyed rights of commonage thereon, and
the carts of those who had turbary privileges which kept them in firing all
the year round, were not erected. Gertrude, therefore, rode along with no
other obstacles than the prickly furze-bushes, the mats of heather, the white
water-courses, and the natural steeps and declivities of the ground.
Her horse was sure, if heavy-footed and slow, and though a draught animal,
was easy-paced; had it been otherwise, she was not a woman who could
have ventured to ride over such a bit of country with a half-dead arm. It was
therefore nearly eight o'clock when she drew rein to breathe her bearer on
the last outlying high point of heath-land towards Casterbridge, previous to
leaving Egdon for the cultivated valleys.
She halted before a pool called Rushy-pond, flanked by the ends of two
hedges; a railing ran through the centre of the pond, dividing h in half. Over
the railing she saw the low green country; over the green trees the roofs of
the town; over the roofs a white flat fašade, denoting the entrance to the
county jail. On the roof of this front specks were moving about; they seemed
to be workmen erecting something. Her flesh crept. She descended slowly,
and was soon amid corn-fields and pastures In another half-hour, when it
was almost dusk, Gertrude reached the White Hart, the first inn of the town
on that side.
34
Little surprise was excited by her arrival; farmers' wives rode on horseback
then more than they do now; though, for that matter, Mrs Lodge was not
imagined to be a wife at all; the innkeeper supposed her some harum-
skarum young woman who had come to attend 'hang-fair' next day. Neither
her husband nor herself ever dealt in Casterbridge market, so that she was
unknown. While dismounting she beheld a crowd of boys standing at the
door of a harness-maker's shop just above the inn, looking inside it with
deep interest.
'What is going on there?' she asked of the ostler.
'Making the rope for tomorrow.'
She throbbed responsively, and contracted her arm.
"Tis sold by the inch afterwards,' the man continued. 'I could get you a bit,
miss, for nothing, if you'd like?'
She hastily repudiated any such wish, all the more from a curious creeping
feeling that the condemned wretch's destiny was becoming interwoven with
her own; and having engaged a room for the night, sat down to think.
Up to this time she had formed but the vaguest notions about her means of
obtaining access to the prison. The words of the cunning-man returned to
her mind. He had implied that she should use her beauty, impaired though
it was, as a pass-key, In her inexperience she knew little about jail
functionaries; she had heard of a high-sheriff and an under-sheriff, but
dimly only. She knew, however, that there must be a hangman, and to the
hangman she determined to apply.
35
VIII
A Water-side Hermit
At this date, and for several years after, there was a hangman to almost
every jail. Gertrude found, on inquiry, that the Casterbridge official dwelt in.
a lonely cottage by a deep slow river flowing under the cliff on which the
prison buildings were situate - the stream being the self-same one, though
she did not know it, which watered the Stickleford and Holmstoke meads
lower down in its course.
Having changed her dress, and before she had eaten or drunk - for she
could not take her ease till she had ascertained some particulars - Gertrude
pursued her way by a path along the water-side to the cottage indicated.
Passing thus the outskirts of the jail, she discerned on the level roof over the
gateway three rectangular lines against the sky, where the specks had been
moving in her distant view; she recognized what the erection was, and
passed quickly on, Another hundred yards brought her to the executioner's
house, which a boy pointed out. It stood close to the same stream, and was
hard by a weir, the waters of which emitted a steady roar.
While she stood hesitating the door opened, and an old man came forth
shading a candle with one hand. Locking the door on the outside, he turned
to a flight of wooden steps fixed against the end of the cottage, and began to
ascend them, this being evidently the staircase to his bedroom. Gertrude
hastened forward, but by the time she reached the foot of the ladder he was
at the top. She called to him loudly enough to be heard above the roar of the
weir; he looked down and said, 'What d'ye want here?'
'To speak to you a minute.'
The candle-light, such as it 'was, fell upon her imploring, pale, upturned
face, and Davies (as the hangman was called) backed down the ladder. 'I
was just going to bed,' he said; '"Early to bed and early to rise", but I don't
36
mind stopping a minute for such a one as you. Come into house.' He
reopened the door, and preceded her to the room within.
The implements of his daily work, which was that of a jobbing gardener,
stood in a corner, and seeing probably that she looked rural, he said, 'If you
want me to undertake country work I can't come, for I never leave
Casterbridge for gentle nor simple - not I. My real calling is officer of justice,'
he added formally.
'Yes, yes! That's it. Tomorrow!'
'Ah! I thought so. Well, what's the matter about that? 'Tis no use to come
here about the knot - folks do come continually, but I tell 'em one knot is as
merciful as another if ye keep it under the ear. Is the unfortunate man a
relation; or, I should say, perhaps' (looking at her dress) 'a person who's
been in your employ?'
'No. What time is the execution?'
'The same as usual - twelve o'clock, or as soon after as the London mail-
coach gets in. We always wait for that, in case of a reprieve.'
'O - a reprieve - I hope not!' she said involuntarily.
'Well, - hee, hee! - as a matter of business, so do I! But still, if ever a young
fellow deserved to be let off, this one does; only just turned eighteen,' and
only present by chance when the rick was fired. Howsomever, there's not
much risk of that, as they are obliged to make an example of him, there
having been so much destruction of property that way lately.'
'I mean,' she explained, 'that I want to touch him for a charm, a cure of an
affliction, by the advice of a man who has proved the virtue of the remedy.'
37
'O yes, miss! Now I understand. I've had such people come in past years.
But it didn't strike me that you looked of a sort to require blood-turning.
What's the complaint? The wrong kind for this, I'll be bound.'
'My arm.' She reluctantly showed the withered skin.
'Ah! - 'tis all a-scram!' said the hangman, examining it.
'Yes,' said she.
'Well,' he continued, with interest, 'that is the class o' subject, I'm bound to
admit! I like the look of the wownd; it is as suitable for the cure as any I ever
saw. 'Twas a knowing-man that sent 'ee, whoever he was.'
You can contrive for me all that's necessary?' she said breathlessly.
'You should really have gone to the governor of the jail, and your doctor with
'ee, and given your name and address - that's how it used to be done, if I
recollect. Still, perhaps, I can manage it for a trifling fee.'
'O, thank you! I would rather do it this way, as I should like it kept private.'
'Lover not to know, eh?'
'No - husband.'
'Aha! Very well. I'll get 'ee a touch of the corpse.'
38
'Where is it now?' she said, shuddering.
'It? - he, you mean; he's living yet. Just inside that little small winder up
there in the glum.' He signified the jail on the cliff above.
She thought of her husband and her friends. 'Yes, of course,' she said; 'and
how am I to proceed?'
He took her to the door. 'Now, do you be waiting at the little wicket in the
wall, that you'll find up there in the lane, not later than one o'clock. I will
open it from the inside, as I shan't come home to dinner till he's cut down.
Goodnight. Be punctual; and if you don't want anybody to know 'ee, wear a
veil. Ah - once I had such a daughter as you!'
She went away, and climbed the path above, to assure herself that she
would be able to find the wicket next day. Its outline was soon visible to her
- a narrow opening in the outer wall of the prison precincts. The steep was
so great that, having reached the wicket, she stopped a moment to breathe:
and, looking back upon the water-side cot, saw the hangman again
ascending his outdoor staircase.' He entered the loft or chamber to which it
led, and in a few minutes extinguished his light.
The town clock struck ten, and she returned to the White Hart as she had
come.
39
IX
A Rencounter
It was one o'clock on Saturday. Gertrude Lodge, having been admitted to the
jail as above described, was sitting in a waiting-room within the second gate,
which stood under a classic archway of ashlar, then comparatively modern,
and bearing the inscription, 'COVNTY JAIL: 1793.' This had been the fašade
she saw from the heath the day before. Near at hand was a passage to the
roof on which the gallows stood.
The town was thronged, and the market suspended; but Gertrude had seen
scarcely a soul. Having kept her room till the hour of the appointment, she
had proceeded to the spot by a way which avoided the open space below the
cliff where the spectators had gathered; but she could, even now, hear the
multitudinous babble of their voices, out of which rose at intervals the
hoarse croak of a single voice uttering the words, 'Last dying speech and
confession!' There had been no reprieve, and the execution was over; but the
crowd still waited to see the body taken down.
Soon the persistent woman heard a trampling overhead', then a hand
beckoned to her, and, following directions, she went out and crossed the
inner paved court beyond the gate-house, her knees trembling so that she
could scarcely walk. One of her arms was out of its sleeve, and only covered
by her shawl.
On the spot at which she had now arrived were two trestles, and before she
could think of their purpose she heard, heavy feet descending stairs
somewhere at her back. Turn her head she would not, or could not, and,
rigid in this position, she was conscious of a rough coffin' passing her borne
by four men. It was open, and in it lay the body of a young man, wearing the
smockfrock of a rustic, and fustian breeches. The corpse had been thrown
into the coffin so hastily that the skirt of the smockfrock was hanging over.
The burden was temporarily deposited on the trestles.
40
By this time the young woman's state was such that a grey mist seemed to
float before her eyes, on account of which, and the veil she wore, she could
scarcely discern anything: it was as though she had nearly died, but was
held up by a sort of galvanism.
'Now!' said a voice close at hand, and she was just conscious that the word
had been addressed to her.
By a last strenuous effort she advanced, at the same time hearing persons
approaching behind her. She bared her poor curst arm; and Davies,
uncovering the face of the corpse, took Gertrude's hand, and held it so that
her arm lay across the dead man's neck, upon a line the colour of an unripe
blackberry, which surrounded it.
Gertrude shrieked:' 'the turn o' the blood', predicted by the conjuror, had
taken place. But at that moment a second shriek rent the air of the
enclosure: it was not Gertrude's, and its effect upon her was to make her
start round.
Immediately behind her stood Rhoda Brook, her face drawn, and her eyes
red with weeping. Behind Rhoda stood Gertrude's own husband; his
countenance lined, his eyes dim, but without a tear.
'D----n you! what are you doing here?' he said hoarsely.
'Hussy - to come between us and our child now!' cried Rhoda. 'This is the
meaning of what Satan showed me in the vision! You are like her at last!'
And clutching the bare arm of the younger woman, she pulled her
unresistingly back against the wall. Immediately Brook had loosened her
hold the fragile young Gertrude slid down against the feet of her husband.
When he lifted her up she was unconscious.
41
The mere sight of the twain had been enough to suggest to her that the dead
young man was Rhoda's son. At that time the relatives of an executed
convict had the privilege of claiming the body for burial, if they chose to do
so; and it was for this purpose that Lodge was awaiting the inquest with
Rhoda. He had been summoned by her as soon as the young man was taken
in the crime, and at different times since; and he had attended in court
during the trial. This was the 'holiday' he had been indulging in of late. The
two wretched parents had wished to avoid exposure; and hence had come
themselves for the body, a wagon and sheet for its conveyance and covering
being in waiting outside.
Gertrude's case was so serious that it was deemed advisable to call to her
the surgeon who was at hand. She was taken out of the jail into the town;
but she never reached home alive. Her delicate vitality, sapped perhaps by
the paralysed arm, collapsed under the double shock that followed the
severe strain, physical and mental, to which she had subjected herself
during the previous twenty-four hours. Her blood had been 'turned' indeed -
too far. Her death took place in the town three days after.
Her husband was never seen in Casterbridge again; once only in the old
market-place at Anglebury, which he had so much frequented, and very
seldom in public anywhere Burdened at first with moodiness and remorse,
he eventually changed for the better, and appeared as a chastened and
thoughtful man. Soon after attending the funeral of his poor wife he took
steps towards giving up the farms in Holmstoke and the adjoining parish,
and, having sold every head of his stock, he went away to Port-Bredy, at the
other end of the county, living there in solitary lodgings till his death two
years later of a painless decline. It was then found that he had bequeathed
the whole of his not inconsiderable property to a reformatory for boys,
subject to the payment of a small annuity to Rhoda Brook, if she could be
found to claim it.
For some time she could not be found; but eventually she reappeared in her
old parish - absolutely refusing, however, to have anything to do with the
provision made for her. Her monotonous milking at the dairy was resumed,
and followed for many long years, till her form became bent, and her once
abundant dark hair white and worn away at the forehead - perhaps by long
pressure against the cows. Here, sometimes, those who knew her
42
experiences would stand and observe her, and wonder what sombre
thoughts were beating inside that impassive, wrinkled brow, to the rhythm
of the alternating milk-streams.
Blackwood's Magazine, January 1888
The End